Category Archives for : Experience

Your life as an entrepreneur comes with many challenges. There are always difficulties, such as uncertain market conditions, financial risks, and competitive pressures that make success seem elusive. As a young entrepreneur, you must know the intricacies of your industry. You must learn how different influences interact and how to deliver value to customers and and in order to do so, you must internalize these habits for young entrepreneurs.

However, you must also develop some useful habits conducive to business that will help you set a course for a lifetime of achievement. The following ten habits will help you succeed as a young entrepreneur.

PEOPLE-ORIENTED HABITS

People make your business work, so you must make a habit of interacting with them on a professional and personal level. When you treat others well, you lay a foundation for high-quality and long-lasting relationships.

1. Respecting Others

As a business person, you should go out of your way to treat other people with respect, courtesy, and dignity. When you sincerely and respectfully interact with partners, employees, customers, and other individuals who play important roles in your business, you win their respect, loyalty, and positive regard. Pay attention to the words you say and how you say them – that way you will always come across as polite and respectful.

2. Exuding Positivity 

While running a business, you will occasionally feel angry, tired, frustrated, and dissatisfied. However, through all the pressures and challenges of being an entrepreneur, you must stay focused on positives and be in control of your emotions. Entrepreneurship implies a lot of communication with others through meetings seminars, and the like. In such situations, you should always try to come across as cheerful and friendly. It is your positive, optimistic outlook that will help you win the support of influencers in your industry.

3. Surrounding Yourself with Successful People 

Carefully choose the people with whom you surround yourself. Avoid the company of negative people who always seem to complain and see the dark side of things. Surrounding yourself with optimistic people in your life will help you stay affirmative even in the midst of adversity. Such people are positive, strong-minded, independent, and friendly – try to stick to those. Enjoying good company will keep you motivated as you actively pursue your goals.

4. Showing up on Time 

The importance of showing up on time cannot be overstated in the context of running a business and it is one of the most important habits for young entrepreneurs. Punctuality communicates to others that you respect their time. When you keep your appointments and promptly fulfill your obligations, you set a high standard or responsibility that attracts customers, workers, and investors. On the other hand, tardiness shows disrespect that can tarnish your reputation and jeopardize your business. Therefore, nurture the habit of always being on time.

5. Focusing on Consumers’ Needs

Forget about aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns. Instead, focus your entire attention on meeting the needs of the people in your target market. Satisfied customers become loyal clients and friends that can support your business through patronage and word-of-mouth. As an outstanding entrepreneur, you should emphasize customer service excellence in your business so that you can build strong, mutually beneficial relationships that can last a lifetime.

SELF-ORIENTED HABITS

In addition to nurturing people-oriented habits, entrepreneurs should never neglect to maintain a lifestyle of growth and personal development. Committing to continual improvement will help you reach your full potential in both your professional and private life.

6. Constantly Learning

As an entrepreneur, you must commit yourself to a lifetime of constant learning. Begin by staying informed about the latest developments in your industry. You should also stay aware of the changes in your target market that can erode your competitive advantage. Outside the business world, feed your natural curiosity about the topics that interest you. Find ways to keep your mind fresh with new and creative ideas.

7. Pursuing New Experiences 

Practice keeping an open mind by deliberately experiencing new things. Keep your life vibrant and fresh by injecting unpredictable elements into your routine. Rearrange your office, take a trip, eat something unusual, or take a long way home. Whatever you do, your new experiences will help you think in new ways and give you new perspectives on the business situations you encounter.

8. Setting New Goals

Having goals helps you focus your efforts and measure your success. When you achieve a goal, enjoy the feeling, but also set a new one to keep yourself motivated. Knowing what you want to accomplish will help you consistently act in ways that will contribute to your objectives. Create your schedule and prioritize your tasks to support your goals, and you will accomplish great things. There is no improvement without constantly challenging yourself.

9. Staying Fit 

A tough, persistent entrepreneur must have the mental abilities to stay productive and make decisions. And as we all know, mental fitness begins with physical fitness. Therefore, try to establish an exercise routine that will keep your body and mind in top condition. To stay vibrant and achieve work-life balance, find a hobby and other activities that help you relax. Take care of yourself and you will have the energy and stamina required for enduring success.

10. Never Giving up 

As an entrepreneur, you set standards for your own personal and business performance. Although you will inevitably face difficulties, it is important to never give up on yourself. Even when you fail after working hard, stay committed to your values, beliefs, and goals. Learn from your mistakes and profit from setbacks. Relentlessly pursue your dreams and make them become your reality.

Final thoughts on habits for young entrepreneurs 

Business success requires more than technical skills – it requires the cultivation of certain habits. Those habits include both the ones that help you interact with others and the ones that make you focus on self-development. As a young businessperson, you should develop the habits listed above so you can embark on a successful journey with unlimited potential.

BIO: Natalie Smith is a freelance writer and copywriter from Seattle. She follows topics such as marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, customer service, and business in general. You can reach her @Natalie Smith

During my years as the CEO of a medical equipment company in Florida, I have come to recognize certain roles and qualities that an effective team leader needs to possess. These leadership qualities will help get the individual, and the team, through some of the more trying times and challenges that arise in everyday business protocols.

It is important for the team leader to provide an environment and facilitate a climate for staff and personnel to succeed. There are also some very difficult roles that the CEO, company president, or team leader is expected to fill, and while many people think the life of a CEO is all about growing a business and cruising around on the company helicopter, there are quite a few hats we have to wear that may not be what you thought.

Check out the following little-known roles CEOs have to play to ensure progression and keep the business humming.

Sometimes You Have to Play Mediator

It often falls to me to play mediator in times of conflict at work. This is both a challenge and an opportunity to expand on skill-sets that are often used in my position. The keys to being an effective mediator are to listen to what each person has to say, show impartiality among the parties, and to resolve the dispute in a way that can be perceived as favorable to all involved.

While taking time away from anything unrelated to growth is not what you might think a CEO would do, this is one of the many areas of leading a team that may not be on every aspiring CEOs list of expectations when entering this role.

Effective Communication Must Come From the Top Down

If you think that you can pass along strategies, policies or processes down through your managers and along to your staff, think again. Your role as CEO will see that you are constantly the communication trailblazer so any introversion or resistance to interfacing with people needs to be thrown out before you enter your leadership role.

The CEO of a business or company needs to practice effective and synergistic communication; synergistic interactions focus on making everyone feel heard, and that they have gained something positive from the engagement. Using optimism rather than cynicism, recognizing achievement, and validating concerns are excellent skills for a team leader to employ to motivate and foster a sense of loyalty and unity.

You’ll Need to Channel Your Inner Tony Robbins

Admittedly, it can be hard to pat your employees on the back for doing what they are paid to do. However, employees are not robots and you have to constantly motivate them and show them that you appreciate their hard work and value what they contribute to the company.

When individuals feel valued and vested in a team, performance and productivity can significantly improve. A great leader is able to be the bridge that makes each team member feel validated, and also reaffirm that they are an integral component of your successful team.

Jack of All Trades, Master of All

Another role of an effective leader is to be able to jump in and do what needs to be done, regardless of the task. From pounding the pavement to sell a product, to lending a hand to get an order shipped on time – a leader that won’t get his or her hands “dirty” is likely an ineffective and inefficient one.

When you start your own company, early on, you do everything yourself. If you lack in areas of business management, you’ll have to work hard to become somewhat knowledgeable. While you can employ experts in specific areas (ex. accounting, marketing, etc.), you’ll still need to know enough about these areas to make intelligent data-driven decisions. Of course, others will be more efficient or skilled at the tasks they perform on a daily basis, but as CEO, there shouldn’t be a job that you can’t jump in and do at a moment’s notice.

You will be the Bearer of Bad News

One of the toughest things that often falls on a CEO or company boss is firing or laying-off staff and employees. A good leader will use empathy and discretion when having these interactions while being clear, transparent, and genuine. This can be a difficult balance to maintain, especially when the individual being let go becomes emotional; be kind, professional, and honest during the exchange.

Do You Have What it Takes to be an Effective CEO?

There are many times when being the CEO or company president isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. It’s not all profits, huge offices, stock options and private jet-setting. The fact of the matter is, to build a solid foundation and core can take decades.

Making decisions that impact a team of valued staff and employees can be a tough burden to bear. However, those that practice transparency, empathy, and positive communication may find these challenges to be opportunities for enhancing leadership skill-sets and personal growth.

Finally, if you think you’ve got it all figured out and no longer need to strive and yearn for further knowledge and honing of your skills as a leader, then you and your company are in big trouble.

Author Byline

John Pritchard is CEO and Sales Leader of Venture Medical, a leader in the nation’s medical equipment industry. He is passionate about educating those in the medical industry on the importance of high quality medical equipment and supplies. His transparent business techniques and strategies for low-pressure sales and marketing are core values in building relationships.

Note: As a startup ourselves we love to hear about other startups. We hope you will also love this story and take some important lessons from it.

We launched our software in January, just a bit over 6 months ago, and since then, it’s been a world of learning.

Some things we expected, and others came completely out of left field.

Here’s a summary of the major hurdles involved in running a startup.

“All Cliches Are True”

We might as well just get started with this one – cliches are by and large, true.

What are some startup cliches you’ve probably heard:

• It will consume your live
• It’s an emotional roller coaster ride
• You’re always teeter tottering between break out success and complete failure
• No amount of success is enough, you always want more.

Over the last 6 months I’ve experienced this virtually every single day.

It seems like no where is safe.

Out at a restaurant – thinking about my startup.

Watching TV – thinking about my startup.

Dreaming…about my startup.

It occupies a lot of mental space, and as someone who has a girlfriend who requires normal human attention, it can be difficult to turn the switch off.

Without a doubt, it has been the most time intensive undertaking I’ve ever voluntarily signed up for.

And the worst are the constant ups and downs.

On the one hand, month over month growth is, more or less, on an upward trend – but we don’t live month to month, we live day to day, and that’s completely all over the place.

One day a dozen people will sign up to test it out, and the next day – no one. For one reason or another daily growth is not smooth, it seems to come in spurts, and those highs and lows create emotional highs and lows where one day you’re on top of the world and the next you’re wondering how it all fell out from under you.

In short, be prepared for a wild ride.

Customer Service Is A Competitive Advantage (And Maybe Your Only One)

Although our product has come a long way, for a long time it was clearly worse. It had less features, a worse UI, and performed slower than the other guys.

But for some reason or another, people still used it.

And for these people, and everyone since then, we’ve always delivered excellent customer service.

Why?

Because there’s no excuse not to.

And frankly, it’s a competitive advantage.

We try to be on 24/7, because a customer who needs help wants it immediately, and if they don’t get it, they might just not log in again – ever.

We even have a way to book a call with us in the app itself:

And people schedule calls with me, daily.

Plus, we’ve extended our support to our website visitors through a live chat, and from time to time have caught the other guys sleeping.

Here’s what happened while a GroupHigh visitor was waiting for a response:

I’ve even tested the competitor’s customer support response times, sending emails to them asking questions, only to find out it took them days to respond.

Although a 14 day free trial seems like a long time, usually it’s only a handful of customer log ins, which means you have to make each and every one of them count.

When people feel like you’re there with them, they get a sense that they can succeed because they have an expert on the tool supporting their every action.

And, as a company, when we know we have limits as to what we can do to further develop the product, the best thing we can do is to empower our users through awesome customer support.

There’s Always Someone Around The Corner

When we first started Ninja Outreach, we were the new kids on the block.

We focused on differentiating ourselves by having a cool brand and doing a lot of content marketing and blogger outreach to get the word out, which our competitors were not doing.

A few months later and our strategy hasn’t changed – we’re still cool, we’re still doing marketing that no one else is doing.

But we’re not the only ones, and some of them are even newer than us.

Just a few months ago another influencer marketing software launched, and is already starting to get exposure, to the point that some of our current customers are asking questions like:

“When are you going to have feature X like they do?”

I’ve gotten this question a million times before in regards to our late stage competitors, and it never bothered me too much because I knew the expectation was that we would be behind on features.

I anticipated that question.

But when you start getting that question in regards to a product that has just launched, it definitely makes you feel uneasy – in fact, this is probably how our competitors felt when their customers asked about us!

Realistically, I try not to get caught up with the competition; they do their thing and we do ours. Hopefully the market is large enough that it will never really make a difference, and often digital marketers use multiple tools anyways.

All the same, just because you’re new and different, it certainly does not mean that no one else can be new and different too. The same lack of barriers to entry that allowed you to get involved and take market share are open to other people as well.

The Market Will Be (And Should Be) Bigger Than You Think

We try to have a target market in mind when we design our tool. For us, it’s digital marketing agencies that do blogger outreach and are looking for a software solution.

We expected that this was thousands of agencies worldwide, and it is.

What we didn’t expect was how many other types of businesses would be interested in the software, such as:

• Bloggers doing content promotion
• Startups looking for exposure
• Small Businesses/eCommerce sites doing blogger outreach
• Sales teams doing lead generation
• Podcasters looking for guests

The list was a lot larger than our initial thought, and I now begin to look at our market as being in the millions.

In many ways this is good – it means there are a lot of people out there interested in what we’re doing.

But it also makes it difficult to tailor your marketing and copywriting – who should you be speaking on your website?

We try to mention the various things you can do with NinjaOutreach without being unfocused, for example:

But inevitably you have to lead with something that targets whoever you believe your best, early adopters are, and for us that’s still about finding influencers.

This is going to have to suit us for now until we have a more general answer to interest people with.

Agile Does Not Mean Fast

Agile is a term used often in the startup world.

It references the fact that startups can move fast and make quick decisions because they aren’t bogged down by the common bureaucracy that plagues larger corporations.

If they want to change something on their website – they just do it; no manager sign off, no conversation with legal, etc.

However, in my experience this applies much more to decision making than execution.

Execution, especially in the software world, is slow, regardless of how quick you make a decision. We’ve had many changes and improvements that have been sitting on the back burner for months, on account of lack of resources.

Sure, from time to time we have agile development, whereby a small feature we just thought of can be implemented in a day and launched to our users tomorrow, without any crazy product specs.

But more often than not, running a startup on a lack of resources is seems more or less equivalent to running an organization with limitless resources but a ton of red tape. Each has their frustrations as to why something isn’t getting done as fast as we would like.

Conclusion

So, has it been worth it?

Heck, yes!

Simply put, I can’t imagine doing anything else, despite the difficulties.

What have you learned from your business?

David Schneider is the Content Director at NinjaOutreach an all in one Influencer Outreach software for marketers. He blogs about business at SelfMadeBusinessman. You can also find him on twitter @ninjaoutreach

Presenting to large groups is intimidating to say the least, especially if you’re looking to promote one of your new products or hoping to have some kind of positive effect on your audience. It’s fair to say that speaking in front of a substantial amount of people is a skill that must be honed through experience, but for many of us presentations are opportunities that don’t come along too often.

If you can make your presentation as good as it can be, you could have a huge influence on anyone from journalists to business partners. If you’re unsure what to include or what to avoid, here are some essential guidelines that are guaranteed to help you nail that all-important presentation.

What to Include:

Enthusiasm

This isn’t a conversation, nor is it a chat with a small group of friends. Presentations are all about you. It might seem daunting but the fact of the matter is that people have come to hear what you have to say, so enthusiasm is essential if you’re hoping to get the right message across.

Enthusiasm demonstrates a number of essential characteristics, including confidence and a clear understanding of what you’re talking about. If you find quietness is more of a comfort zone for you, it’s vital that you practice being as clear and concise as you can be.

The experience shouldn’t be relaxed, so if you find yourself with your hands in your pockets desperately trying to string sentences together that simply aren’t making any sense to the journalist in the front row looking perplexed in front of his laptop, it’s time search for a bit more enthusiasm.

Take Advantage of Tech

You don’t have to be tech savvy to realize that modern presentations require a little bit more than just a voice. In fact, vibrant, colorful and detailed presentations can help those of us who haven’t been gifted with the most imposing characteristics.

Clicker systems ( also knows as audience response systems ) create an all-important bond between the audience and the speaker. Combined with PowerPoint presentations, clicker systems allow you to digest information you receive from your audience moments after you ask a question or look to gather opinions. There’s no better way to provide audiences with the opportunity to have a say.

You can also make use of wireless USB presenters which usually comes with a red laser pointer. This allows you the freedom to move around while doing the presentation and you don’t have to move towards the computer every time you need to switch slides.

And if your screen-based presentation requires high quality diagrams and imagery to further explain the point then Creately is perfect solution for you. Not only is it easy to use it has real-time collaboration so multiple people can contribute at the same time, thus making your presentation much more interesting.

Know Your Audience

You could be presenting to anyone, or you could be presenting to a very specific group of people. Either way, it’s important you know exactly who your audience are prior to even planning your presentation. If you’re presenting to a group of students, think about their specific studies and what they have the most experience in e.g. technology, life sciences, literature etc.

If you’re presenting to a room full of journalists, you need to understand that what you tell them is likely to appear in some form of media over the coming days. Potential clients will need to be advertised to, while business partners want more in the way of business credentials and the potential of your product or service.

Adjusting your approach during a presentation is difficult but if the demographic is so broad you simply don’t know where to begin, it might help to hear back from everyone in the audience. This is another way clicker systems could really help your presentation.

What to Avoid:

Bad Visuals

There’s nothing worse than demonstrating you haven’t got the faintest idea how to work a digital presentation. Not only does it lose you valuable presenting time, it may even put your audience off completely as they sit in anticipation of what you have to say.

The visuals are incredibly important as they need to be easily digestible for your audience, so you don’t want to be overcrowding the screen with a plethora of images. There’s nothing worse than seeing an image with a poor resolution either.

Don’t Read the Screen

This is the biggest indicator that you haven’t bothered to remember any of the context of your presentation, so it’s vital that you don’t get caught looking at the screen as a means of finding something to say. Everything you plan on covering during your presentation should be in your head and part of an organised selection of topics.

You can avoid this completely by not having bullet points up on the screen and instead using high quality imagery or diagrams. You’re voice won’t project the right way if you do start using the screen, so it’s a good idea to practice your presentation and see whether or not you can fill the provided time with useful and substantial information.

Moving Off Topic

It’s easy to do this at times but you need to make sure you’re on topic throughout your presentation. Those in the audience have come for the sole purpose of hearing about a very specific topic, such as a product release. It’s impossible to tell whether off-topic chatter will appeal to everyone in the audience.

Moving off topic may also include relying on too much information from your audience. Clicker systems are the best way of taking in information from your audience as it is discreet and related to a topical subject, but asking the audience whether they’ve all used Microsoft OneNote before as a means of creating topical chatter is not the way to go.

Here are a few other things to consider prior to starting your presentation;

• Presentations should tell a story that includes a detailed beginning, middle and end related to the subject
• Structuring your presentation is essential if you’re hoping for a free-flowing audience experience
• Be as unique as you can and don’t be afraid to integrate your own ideas
• It’s a good idea to summarize what you’re talking about so that people with less of an understanding can get involved as well
• If things don’t turn out great, take advantage of Plan B you’ve thought up beforehand
• Don’t criticize your own presentation while it’s going on!

Mike James is a content editor for www.clikapad.com , a leading audience response system for PowerPoint.

Every business wants a strong foundation. After developing an innovative product and gaining a solid customer base, you’ll no doubt want to seek out capital to further your mission and continue to build your business. Just as there are many different types of businesses, there are many different sources of capital. Some entrepreneurs may dig into their own pockets to fund their startups or pursue traditional funding opportunities with investors, but these routes may not be possible or practical for all entrepreneurs.

Here are a few ways that startups can generate capital (some more conventional than others).

“F&F” loans

For many entrepreneurs the people that want them to succeed most are their friends and family (F&F). Family members and close friends may be interested in giving funds to get a startup off the ground, but you should be careful with this strategy. Many small businesses fail early on and it’s likely you won’t want jeopardize relationships with those closest to you if you are unable to pay back money that your friends and family have invested.

A good rule of thumb with “F&F loans” is to not borrow more than you can realistically pay back. Even though these loans will be more personal or friendly than ones secured through a bank or other “official” source, you should still put agreements in writing and clearly explain the terms.

Partner up

Entrepreneurs that don’t have the capital to start their businesses themselves may consider bringing on a business partner that does have the necessary funds. If you’re thinking about bringing on a partner, you need to ensure that they see the business the same way you do and that you agree on the goals and milestones for the business.

A partner will have some control over the business, so you want to be sure you trust their judgment and vision. (But even if you trust someone implicitly you should still have a buy out arrangement in case the relationship eventually sours.)

Crowd-funding

While crowd-funding has grown in popularity over the last few years, it is still an emerging force in the business realm. Sites like Kickstarter, Fundable, and IndieGoGo are popular online but they’re not quite household names. While there have been some major successes in the crowd-funding space (such as the Pebble Watch and Oculus Rift), there have been many failed campaigns that didn’t meet their goals.

Crowd-funding’s power comes from the audience – funds come from the public and potential users of your product or technology. Startups present their ideas to the public on these websites and people can choose how much they want to give to see the project come to fruition.

Many of these sites also allow for rewards systems that allow startups to offer rewards for donations, including access to the proposed technology or product. It’s a great way for startups to generate capital from the people most likely to be interested in their products, services or technology.

Competitions

Most great businesses start with a great business plan. Luckily those dynamite business plans can earn entrepreneurs some serious cash. Business plan competitions are becoming increasingly more popular, and some pay out thousands of dollars to the winning entrepreneurs.

When we first launched Creately competitions helped us a lot with our initial funding. The cash prizes are great and helpful but what’s even more helpful is the recognition and the media coverage you get from winning these events. Even if you didn’t win anything make sure to participate in start-up events because the benefits are incomparable.

Each of the above solutions for generating capital is unique, and each has its own pros and cons. The first step when seeking funding is to determine the right source of capital for your business. Once you understand that, you will be better prepared to examine all possible opportunities and make more informed choices.

Megan Ritter is a graduate student at USC and an online marketer. Follow her @megmarieritter.

The internet and business have both been through some dramatic changes over the course of the last decade or so. Social media has given consumers a voice, taking the power from the corporate space and placing it firmly in the hands of the customer. Faster internet connections and mobile devices mean that we can now consume a variety of multimedia content from our sitting rooms and whilst on the go.

For the talented entrepreneur, there now exists huge opportunity to carve out a substantial niche in the business world. But with increased opportunity comes more competition, so it’s up to the individual to ensure that the business performs at its peak right from the start. In years gone by, access to high-end technology was really only for the big players, but this is something that has changed, thanks largely to the cloud.

Cloud Takes Off

Cloud computing is nothing new, it’s actually been around for many years. However, it’s only within the last couple that it’s captured the imagination of the public and begun to take off and gain traction in industry. Whilst many dismissed cloud as nothing more than a techie buzz word a couple of years ago, this is clearly not the case and the cloud can now be found in many businesses and indeed also has its uses for consumers.

Initially, there were many doubts surrounding security and the cloud. This was to my mind slightly ridiculous, since robust security and backup processes are an area which many businesses fail in. In fact, a recent survey found that many companies fail to implement even the most basic security such as antivirus software and vulnerability scanning. With this in mind, it’s likely that the cloud is more secure than the majority of onsite set-ups.

Payment Model Offers Flexibility

The cloud offers a lot in terms of flexibility and scalability to the young hungry startup. Whilst in the past technology products often meant a huge amount on capital expenditure, this isn’t at all necessary when using cloud services. Payment models tend to be ‘pay monthly’, with no tied in contracts and businesses able to pay for what they need, as and when they need it.

When using cloud services such as hosted desktop, there’s no requirement to spend out on expensive, top-notch computers and software licenses either. Thin clients with no storage capability can be used as all of the applications and the data that they generate can be hosted in the cloud.

Cloud Definitions

Just like any technology, the cloud can be difficult to understand to the layman, mostly due to the tech industry’s love affair with jargon. There are three main cloud models that you’re likely to come across when researching what’s available for business.

By far the most popular up until this year has been the SaaS model (Software-as-a-Service). This model is generally concerned with applications, as the name suggests. These are hosted by the cloud services company in a data center, which should be in the same country ideally, as different countries have various laws surrounding data. Data centers are made up of powerful server clusters which are protected by hardware and software firewalls and often, additional physical security that’s onsite. Data centers are usually always on ‘24/7’ and tend to have disaster recovery plans should the worst happen and there’s a fire, a malware attack, or if hardware fails. When the latter happens, often businesses don’t even notice any downtime on their systems, as data is simply rerouted to another part of the network.

Virtual Desktops and IaaS

Virtual desktops and other SaaS services are widely used in business and can be for as little as hosting your email account in the cloud (think Gmail and you will begin to understand how long cloud services have been around). However, such offerings can also be much more extensive, with many businesses choosing to host their entire CMS, CRM and accounting systems with their providers.

The second most popular cloud model is now gaining more traction in the market as the technology becomes increasingly trusted. This is IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) which as the name implies, means that a company can have all of their IT network infrastructure (aside from end user workstations) hosted in the cloud. Again, this is substantially cheaper than setting up a physical network at the business premises, with servers and email servers.

It can’t be stressed enough how much these technologies have to offer in terms of cash-saving benefits, flexibility and scalability. A startup need only pay for what it uses and needn’t spend huge amounts of cash on hardware and software, meaning that startup and running costs are significantly reduced.

PaaS

The third, less used model is PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) and this is used more as a developmental area than anything else. Developers can and do build and test their own applications in the cloud as well as run existing ones. This isn’t as popular a model as the other two, as not many businesses have the need for their own development and testing servers.

There are plenty of variations on all of these and it’s highly likely that you’ll come across other cloud offerings which can essentially be put into one of these main three categories. For example, Security-as-a-Service is one that I have come across reasonably often, but this can really be applied to the SaaS model as it’s likely that for the most part the security will come in the form of applications.

Hybrid, AWS, Choice …

The growing popularity of the cloud means that there is now a lot of choice on the market. Amazon Web Services are extremely popular, for example and some companies even have their own private cloud set up. This is often where you’ll see the word hybrid pop-up too. Hybrid is a mixture of public and private cloud and can be useful for those companies who need to ensure that data exists just within their own company network, behind the corporate firewall.

This can be mixed with public cloud, such as that offered by Amazon, depending on the needs of the business. Needless to say, there are ways in which the cloud can be set up to suit pretty much every type of business on the planet.

For the entrepreneur, the cloud offers a road into starting a business without too much in the way of cash. Couple this with modern growth hacking techniques and you can effectively do away with the large, Hollywood-movie-scale glitzy launch and grow a business quickly without a huge level of investment. The savvy entrepreneur is one that utilises the latest technologies with the latest techniques in order to achieve high growth and a sustainable business.

Bio

Kerry Butters is a technology writer from the UK and writes prolifically across all techie subjects for some of the world’s leading sites. Also a published author, Kerry writes today on behalf of Power Admin LLC, a US provider of server and file monitoring and remote desktop solutions.